Steven Raichlen

About The Host:

Steven Raichlen is a journalist, TV host, and multi-award-winning author—but he may be best known as the man who reinvented barbecue. Raichlen wrote the best-selling Barbecue Bible cookbook series (more than 4 million copies in print). His Primal Grill and Barbecue University TV shows—among the top rated on public television—have helped people all over the world ascend the ladder of grilling enlightenment. Last year, he put his degree in French literature to use, taping a French language TV show called Le Maitre du Grill, which airs in Quebec.

Raichlen’s obsession with live fire cooking began with The Barbecue Bible (Workman, 1998), an IACP/Julia Child Award-winning encyclopedic study of global grilling chronicling his 4-year, 200,000-mile odyssey on the world’s barbecue trail. In 2001, Workman published the IACP Award-winning How to Grill, the world’s first step-by-step guide to live fire cooking, with more than 1000 color photographs, hailed by the New York Times as "astute, approachable, and eminently appealing.”

BBQ USA (2003)—Raichlen’s 780-page, 650-photograph, 425-recipe love song to regional American barbecue—won a 2004 James Beard Award. He is currently working on a book and TV show on global grilling called Planet Barbecue.

In all Raichlen has won 5 James Beard Awards and 3 IACP awards, and his books have been translated into 15 languages, including French, Russian, and Japanese. He recently completed his first novel.

Raichlen has appeared on virtually every major national TV show, from the Today show, Good Morning America, and CNN to Oprah, The View, and LIVE with Regis and Kelly. In 2000, he created Barbecue University -- a unique cooking school held at the luxurious Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, and hailed by the Food Network as the “#1 Barbecue Experience in the U.S.” Raichlen also battled—and defeated—Iron Chef Roksbura Michiba in a “Battle of the Barbecue Gods” on Japanese television. And three years ago, he joined forces with The Companion Group of Emeryville, California, to launch a line of grilling accessories, rubs, and sauces sold around the world.

In 1975, Raichlen received a Watson Foundation Fellowship to study medieval cooking in Europe, as well as a Fulbright to study comparative literature. He holds a degree in French literature from Reed College and trained at the Cordon Bleu and La Varenne cooking schools in Paris. Raichlen lives with his wife, Barbara, in Miami, Florida.